


halves of whole

by valkyrisms



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cohabitation, Dubious Science, F/M, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, Oh No I'm Into It, Polyamory, Psychic Bond, alternate POV, this was supposed to be much shorter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 08:37:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13947870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyrisms/pseuds/valkyrisms
Summary: Laura Barton sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night with the cold certainty that the man laying in bed next to her is not her husband.





	halves of whole

**Author's Note:**

> if marvel's not going to talk about the mind control thing I'm going to, six years later

Laura Barton sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night with the cold certainty that the man laying in bed next to her is not her husband.

Not entirely, at least. It’s Clint Barton in the flesh, laying there with breaths usually deep and even, but the feeling that there is something different under his skin is unshakeable. At first, she thinks it’s New York. Clint’s always been a bit quiet after coming home from rough missions, curling a little closer to her at night, and the way he suddenly seems distant could be fresh trauma. But then it doesn’t go away. She wakes up in the morning to make breakfast and her husband is almost unrecognizable in bed. Laura supposes, for a long time, that New York just really did him in, and loves him anyway. Tony Stark had a press conference a few weeks after the Chitauri invasion, just to give the people a little more peace of mind, but five minutes after trying to explain the wormhole that had opened above his tower his face had gone chalk-white and a bumbling Bruce Banner had to step up instead. She watches Clint for things like that, sudden flashbacks or triggers, but in the daytime he was almost exactly the same. He’ll scoop up the kids with jokes and laughter, do his work around the house, and wake her up occasionally with a big breakfast and let her relax in the morning as he gets the kids ready for school.

If things were bad, if Clint had been affected in some drastic way from New York (the mind control wasn’t explained to her entirely; she didn’t know if it was because her husband wanted some modicum of privacy or because SHIELD didn’t know much about it themselves), then Natasha would tell her. It had been Natasha who had given Laura the rundown of New York, what really happened as opposed to the heroic Avengers story the news kept running on a loop for weeks, explained it as it happened behind the scenes. What had happened to Clint.

Laura didn’t know much about Loki, considering there was very little information that Thor had given that seemed relevant. He was adopted from another race of people, and while Thor had been banished to Earth he had tried to commit genocide, fallen into space, and popped up with the Chitauri invasion. Natasha had been smart enough to outwit him, she had said as much, and the Avengers as a whole had taken down him and a whole army. The idea that Loki had gotten inside Clint’s head and done so much damage he was unrecognizable to her was unrealistic and something she didn’t even want to consider.

_Things are fine,_ Laura thinks one day, watching Clint drive the tractor around with Cooper in his lap. Clint spots her watching and waves, picks up one of Cooper’s tiny, pudgy hands to wave at her too, and she smiles despite herself. _We’re fine._

 

Then she hears, tangentially down the SHIELD grapevine, that Loki is dead. Jane Foster had been spreading the word around SHIELD’s R&D department. While Natasha tells Laura that Jane had good intentions, just not wanting anyone to talk too much about Loki if Thor ever ambled his way down there, Clint took it pretty hard.

Laura corners him. “Is this something you want to talk about?” she asks him one night as he’s getting into bed, casually blocking the doorframe. His eyes dart to the window. Only for a second, but definitely. “No pitching yourself out windows at home. You do enough of that at work,” she sighs, and gets into bed next to him.

Clint props himself up on one elbow and looks at her. He’s smiling, and his eyes are soft. Sometimes Laura thinks he’s a different person, but whoever that person is, she’s never doubted he loves her. “Yes, ma’am. Staying right here.” He pauses for a moment, twists his mouth. “I don’t think so. I’m just mad I didn’t get to stick an arrow in him myself.” When she doesn’t answer him, he reaches over and tucks her into his side. “I’m fine. I know when you’re looking at me funny, too. It just feels weird that he’s dead and _apparently,_ died doing something decent for a change,” he snorts. “As long as Thor’s not expecting a condolence card, I think I’ll be fine.”

Laura kisses him goodnight, and has about five minutes of peace before Clint wakes her up from the brink of sleep. “You know,” he says, conversationally into the dark, and her spine is already crawling. “I don’t think he’s dead at all.”

 

“Please be careful!” Laura shouts after the kids, rolling over each other in an effort to make it down the back porch steps and into the barn. She knows her darling husband keeps all sorts of suspicious spy things in there, and while the kids have thankfully never gotten into any of it (successfully, at least, they’re her and Clint’s kids so she’s sure they’ve at least tried) she still doesn’t like the idea of leaving them unsupervised. But someone needs to make dinner, and Clint’s shooting his way through Laos right now.

Laura watches the kids from the window above the kitchen sink as she pours some oil into a measuring cup, but all they do is drag out some overgrown Nerf gun Clint had souped up for them and shooting each other. Still watching them to make sure the large, special darts don’t poke an eye out, she feels around in the cabinet for a mixing bowl and feels her fingers brush something _weird_ and _soft_ instead. The cup of oil goes clattering into the sink as she jerks her hand back and stands on tip-toes to see what it was. _Don’t be a rat—_

It’s a bag. It’s a small velvet bag, and for a stupid minute Laura thinks Clint was trying to give her jewelry in some strange, evasive spy way in the same way Natasha sometimes cooks foreign desserts in her kitchen after everyone’s gone to bed and leaves them on the counter to flee into the night. _Spies._ But she dumps the bag onto the counter and finds it full of feathers, tiny stones, a hunk of suspiciously colorful glass, and a collection of eggshells that are probably from the hens outside. She stares at it for a moment. The odds of someone having broken into the farm to place a bag of junk in her cabinet are pretty slim. The odds of _Clint_ placing a bag of junk in the cabinet are not much higher, but it’s more likely. She touches her finger to the shells. One of them crumbles a little. The piece of glass, smooth on all edges, vibrates under her touch, and she yanks her finger away.

Laura hears the kids shrieking outside, and leans back to look out the window again. Lila has indeed made an effort to take her brother’s eye out, and he’s crying about it. Laura decisively packages the little objects back up as best as she can, ties the string back together, and places it back into the cabinet for a future interrogation. She has more important things to worry about, and goes outside to take the Nerf gun away.

But Clint comes back from Laos with a broken arm and after he puts the kids to bed, tells her the story of the trafficking victims, some of them barely old enough to walk, and she forgets about it. _A problem for another day,_ Laura tells herself, and tells it to herself day after day.

 

It’s a long time before that Laura admits that there might be a bigger problem than she’s realized. Three years after New York. There’s been the bags hidden in crevices all over the house that she now knows Clint is leaving, as they only pop up whenever he’s home, and the way he sleeps like the dead, and the way he sometimes wakes-but-not-really, eyes wide open as he stares at the walls, unresponsive and terrifying. She’s mentioned it to Natasha, who reassures her but looks a little worried, but she doesn’t hear anything back from her. If there was something wrong, Natasha would tell her. Life goes on. For a while, it seems like everything goes back to normal. Clint sleeps normally and doesn’t do anything weird, and the bags stop coming. Laura hopes, can’t quite convince herself but hopes, that the whole thing was just trauma, and it’s healing with time.

Then everything is _great._ Laura’s pregnant with Natasha (then _Nathaniel!_ ) and he’s so wonderful and Clint is absolutely perfect with him, even after Ultron. After Pietro. It kills Laura to think it, but she thinks Pietro’s death has something to do with the way Clint is so devoted to Nathaniel, taking the most time off work she’s ever seen since they met. He seems stable, working on the house some more to keep himself busy, but Laura rides into town more often, spending time reading in coffee houses and browsing the few stores with the reassurance that Clint is home and taking care of the baby and the kids. They’re happy. _We’re fine,_ Laura tells herself again, and lets herself believe it, which of course means that something happens almost immediately.

 

A week ago, Clint had been called in via a phone call from Jane Foster, who now that SHIELD was disbanded had resorted to personal contacts to yell excitedly into the phone about strange readings from a small area in Norway. He had left the same day even though he had only been home for a few days, but she didn’t blame him. After SHIELD collapsing, and then still hearing about the aftermath of what had happened with Steve and Tony, she knew he needed the work to keep himself occupied.

And then today, she had helped Lila with her math homework and did her best to play ball with Cooper; then she went to wash the dishes after the kids went to bed and there had been a rainbow fractal of light in the middle of the kitchen.

It was almost a column, only fainter, like it wasn’t actually there. Laura just stood there for a minute, her first instinct to block the stairwell to to the kids’ rooms, but the pillar just seemed to shift and move with shards of color, without any malice. Without anything else to do, she grabbed the egg whisk still laying on the counter and brandished it, and shouted, “Hey!” She gave the egg whisk a hefty swing, and it collided with the column, proving that it was indeed solid and there by scattering rainbow shards all over her kitchen.

The rest of the pillar continued to shift and glisten, but the hole that she had knocked into one of the sides showed an abyss in the center of it, a darkness that somehow gave the illusion of motion. Her skin crawling, she stepped backwards, inching around it to block the stairway in case something decided to come through. That’s how this whole mess had started, Clint going _doors open both ways,_ and she braced herself on the bottom stair, ready to yell for the kids if something slithered through.

And it did. A slim hand clutched at the edge of the hole, shattering more of the rainbow column as the rest of the figure tried to clamber its way through unsuccessfully: whatever the column was made out of slicing skin. Finally, the figure got an elbow over the edge and hauled itself up a little higher so Laura could see exactly who was in the middle of the rainbow.

It was a man. He had shaggy black hair that looked like it might’ve been styled at one point but now just looked like a wreck and bright green eyes centered in a pale and pointy face. He struggled for a moment, apparently not noticing her, trying to pull himself through the hole when it seemed like the pillar was trying to suck him back in, before lifting his head. Immediately his grip slipped and his elbow slid off, leaving him trying to pull himself up by cut hands. “Laura,” he said, almost gasped, and slipped a little more.

His voice was smooth, faintly and oddly English, and a little desperate. Laura knew who he was then, because sometimes Clint would open his mouth in his sleep and this man’s voice would come out. She dropped the whisk and lunged forward at the exact moment Loki lost his grip and went tumbling, backwards, still staring at her with his mouth an o of shock, into the rainbow that vanished only moments later.

Laura sat down heavily on one of the kitchen stools. The whisk, still smeared with egg whites from tonight’s dessert, lay on the floor. She ran her fingers through her hair once, twice, and then picked up the phone. Clint was in Norway and he never communicated on missions, but there was someone else she could call.

It was almost one in the morning, but Jane picked up after two rings. 

 

“Where’s the rest of it?” Jane exclaimed, tapping her feet all over Laura’s kitchen floor. The kids were already at school when Jane had landed in her backyard. She had no idea how she had gotten from Europe to America so fast, but only ten hours after the phone call, a small jet had landed in the field outside the farm and Jane had come pouring out of it, already brandishing notebooks and a tiny laptop.

Laura crossed her arms. She had gone through her kitchen and picked up every shard go the rainbow glass she could find and put it in a reusable grocery bag for Jane to pick apart, but she did have kids and therefore had vacuumed up the tiny pieces. “I vacuumed it up. If you want to rummage through my vacuum bag, be my guest,” Laura answered, gesturing to the vacuum that, as Jane had explained it, apparently held pieces of a magical rainbow bridge that crossed the gaps between different realms.

“You _vacuumed_ up the _Bifrost?_ ” Jane moaned, slumping into a chair.

“She’s always like this with science things,” her tiny intern said from the kitchen counter where she was perched, eating a sandwich she had helped herself to making. “She’ll get over it.”

“Darcy, _please._ This woman just broke off part of the Bifrost and then vacuumed it up. I’m already having a meltdown.” Jane sighed and put her head in her hands. Laura had already given her the rundown of what happened, aside from Loki’s appearance. To Jane, the Bifrost had just appeared in her kitchen and she had given it a solid whack, and part of it had broken off before it had vanished. She knew the Loki thing would come out eventually, but Jane had seen Loki die. And unlike her husband, still seemed to be under that impression. “The Bifrost is a bridge between the realms, but as far as I know only Asgard can trigger it. You haven’t heard from Thor, have you?” Jane asked. “Has Clint?”

Laura shook her head. “As far as I know, he’s roaming the universe. Looking for stones. Smartly staying out of Steve and Tony’s squabbles, unlike Clint. Maybe someone from SHIELD could’ve contact him, but that’s not really an option anymore.”

Jane groaned. “He’s always like this,” she grumbled before reaching into her bag to pull out some device. Laura liked Jane. Even if Jane had broke it off with Thor (“It was mutual,” Jane always insisted, but it was obvious from Thor’s moping that she had been the one to suggest it), she had been soundly professional about the whole thing and still spoke pretty fondly of him. As Jane explained it, Thor gave her the evidence and credence that her theories weren’t crazy, and now that she had some ears she was slowly carving herself a niche in the science world about interrealm travel. She still respected him, but he didn’t call enough. “Maybe he was trying to visit you and something happened?”

The machine she was holding was giving a series of alarming beeps, which made her narrow her eyes at Laura. She squirmed only slightly. From the look on Loki’s face and the way that the Bifrost had seemed to actively suck him back in, she doubted that he had just been trying to pop in for a visit, or even if Thor was involved at all. “I’m going to take some readings around the house. Darcy, get the Bifrost pieces out of the vacuum, please,” Jane said, standing up and taking her device with her to go up the stairs.

Darcy swung her feet for a moment. “Whatever you’re hiding from her, dude, she’ll know eventually. It’s a scientist thing,” she said. _It’s a spy thing, too,_ Laura thought mutinously, thinking of the effort she went into every year to hide Clint’s birthday presents from him. “Better tell her before she figures it out and gets all sad on you.”

It was Laura’s turn to sigh. The idea of telling the world that Loki was still alive and kicking if not maybe in a great place right now didn’t seem like a fantastic idea, but she also felt some kind of obligation to him. Even if the obligation was just to save him so she could demand what he had done to Clint.

Jane came barreling down the stairs and Laura caught her by the arm as she tried to slip into the living room. “It wasn’t Thor,” she said.

Jane’s eyes narrowed and she squeezed her machine before closing her eyes. She was smart. She would get it. Laura slowly guided her to a chair and placed her in it, and Jane tossed the machine onto the kitchen table. “He’s _dead,_ ” she said harshly, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “How do you even know it was him? I know they blocked off all the footage from Stuttgart—”

“It’s kind of complicated,” Laura sighed. “I think he’s still connected to Clint somehow. I didn’t recognize him at first, but he said my name and sometimes Clint speaks with his voice and—”

“He _what?_ ” Darcy said in a muffled voice, and both of them turned around to see she had gotten into the jar of cookies. “What?” she said defensively. “I mean, that’s really creepy.”

Laura plopped down in the chair next to Jane. “It’s been like this since New York. He’s the same person and I definitely don’t think Loki is, like, controlling him. It’s like bits of him… leak through, sometimes.” Jane was still staring at her. “I still love him,” she said, because it seemed necessary.

All the fight seemed to go out of Jane at once, deflating. “I know, I know. Just, why didn’t you let anyone know about this before? Does Natasha know?” she demanded.

That was a question. It was literally impossible that Nat didn’t know at least _something_ was up, but as far as Laura had seen, Clint’s weirdness had only acted up at night or when he was really tired. They went on missions together, sure, less so now that SHIELD was out of order, but it wasn’t like they were going to bed together every night. There was a possibility that he had been leaving tiny bags of junk in her stuff, but Nat hadn’t mentioned anything. “I don’t think so,” Laura replied. “And it wasn’t something I was actively worried about until Loki broke into my living room.” She explained in great, great detail after Jane’s prodding exactly what had happened, answering both her questions (“The Bifrost usually leaves marks, you didn’t wipe any of those off?”) and Darcy’s questions (“Be honest, which brother is hotter?”) as best she could.

“It looks like Loki was going somewhere he didn’t want to go. Maybe he tried to control the Bifrost or something, and ended up here. Thor said he was a pretty powerful magic user, even if all I got to see were a few illusions,” Jane suggested, back to pacing around the kitchen.

“I dunno. If Loki is somewhere bad, should we, like… leave him there?” Darcy asked, clicking on her phone. “He obviously faked his own death. Fresh out of prison and already back on his bullshit.”

Jane, ignoring most of that, looked at Laura. “Listen. Every time I get more data or readings on the Bifrost, I get a little farther on working on my Einstein-Rosen bridge. I have all the data I can get here, but if you want,” she hesitated, “I can try and find him. You know, in space.”

Laura stares back at her. “Yes,” she says finally, thinking about Clint and Loki and all the ways they were blurring, “I think I would like that.”

 

Clint returned three days later, looking bright-eyed and no worse for wear, scooping the kids up and spinning them. Laura was sure that there was something written on her face that showed what she had been up to, and on some level she knew that Clint figured something was up but was waiting for her to go to him. She almost did.

But that night, Clint is pressed up against her back with his arm curled around her waist and he says, “I think Thor is dead.” Laura lets her heart pound, and pretends to sleep.

 

It’s very nice to have confirmation that something was up with Clint. Jane calls her a few days later to tell her that the clothes she fished out of the hamper are giving off some sort of weird signals, sparks of energy that Jane confirms aren’t anything like she had seen on Midgard before (Jane talks like Thor, and it occurs to Laura now it’s similar to the way Clint talks sometimes).

“It’s not a whole lot to go on,” Jane says over the phone. Laura is crouched in the kid’s bathroom upstairs with Clint downstairs doing some work on the deck. It feels terrible, skulking around like this, but she doesn’t know what Clint would say if she brought it up to him. She doesn’t even know if he realizes what’s happening. “But I think, somehow, the two of them might still be connected. From New York.”

She launches into a bit about how the readings she’s getting off Clint’s stuff are something similar to radioactivity, but not quite, in the same way that the readings from the Bifrost shards are similar to gamma radiation, but not quite. Something about how all magic is just science, and maybe Clint, through Loki, is accidentally learning it, but most of it goes over Laura’s head and she fixates on the thing that means the most to her. “Connected? Like Loki’s still…” She doesn’t want to say “controlling him,” because the things Clint does are intrinsically him, so she just goes with, “In his head?”

Jane hums over the other end. “I’m not sure. I actually think it’s working in the reverse. Clint is tapping somehow into Loki’s consciousness, learning things from him and probably experiencing whatever Loki is experiencing now. That would explain why he’s still acting like himself but doing different things, like, what did you say? Making hex bags?”

Laura leans back against the door. “What does that mean?”

“Hard to tell. I don’t think it’s hurting him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“He’s not—” Laura glances out the window. Clint was still on the deck. “Himself,” she hisses.

There’s a pause. “Do you think he’s going to hurt you?” Jane asks her, very seriously.

A week ago, even with all the weirdness, she would have said no instantaneously. Clint still loves her, and she believes that, but if there was a whole other person rattling around in his brain, a person who had literally invaded the Earth and had tried to commit genocide _twice,_ could she really trust him? It’s not Clint that she didn’t trust, she tells herself, it’s Loki. “No, I don’t think so,” she answers, slowly. “I’m just afraid he’s losing himself,” she confesses quietly into the phone, as if Clint could hear her from the deck.

Jane sighs. “Listen, if he gets worse, I want you to call me and get the kids out of there, okay? I met Loki. He didn’t do anything terrible, aside from faking his death which Thor is going to kill him for, but he didn’t seem like a stable guy.” After Laura assures her that yes, she will, Jane continues with, “I’m working with StarkTech right now. I’m using their satellites and some leftover SHIELD tech to try and find traces of this weird energy. If I find anything, I’ll let you know. I want to find Loki as much as you, okay?” Jane tells her, and launches into some more science talk. Laura eventually excuses herself when she hears the back door open and close, and promises to call again.

When she goes downstairs, Clint is pulling splinters out of his fingers over the sink, wincing only slightly. Laura smiles despite herself. The same man who can come home riddled with bullet holes like Swiss cheese and still bounds around the house and fights with the coffee maker, obviously pouting about tiny pricks of wood. “Do I need to help you with that?” she asks from the bottom of the stairs.

Clint turns sheepishly, grinning. “Not quite, but do you have tweezers laying around? I can probably take it from there.” Laura nods, and goes into the bedroom. When she returns, he’s still grinning at her but his eyes are a bright, bright blue.

 

In the end, it’s Clint that comes to her. He’s gone to break up some underworld shenanigans in Chile for a week, and when he comes back it’s the dead of night. Laura rolls over, yawning, as he crawls into bed with her. He’s yanked off his shirt and looks clean enough to snuggle up against, even if he still smells faintly of gunpowder, but when she slings an arm around him and mumbles for him to take his shoes off, his body is rigid. “Clint?” she yawns, sitting up. In the moonlight, his eyes are blue again. They’ve been changing a lot in the past few weeks. Laura thinks the kids have noticed.

He sighs and tucks her under one arm. “The guys… It was supposed to be a drug ring, but they had girls down there too. Real young.” He rubs the bridge of his nose with two fingers. Laura murmurs something nonsensical, rubbing circles on the wrist he’s slung around her waist. It’s pretty rare that missions affect him like this, but Laura thinks it’s impossible not to be so hard that there’s not a few things that really get to you. With Clint, it tends to be kids.

But then he says, “I froze them,” which is a twist.

“You _what?_ ”

“I froze them solid. I was so angry, Laura. I dunno, I went to break this guy’s arm, but the second I touched him all the ice just started going up his torso. And then it kept happening, and then all of them were dead.” Clint stares at the ceiling. For the first time in a while, Laura feels herself relax. This was Clint, regardless of the amount of Loki in him, coming to her and talking to her about it. Clint misinterprets her silence and quickly elaborates, “It wasn’t like I wanted to kill all of them, we were just fighting and it was completely instinctual—”

Laura places her finger against his mouth. “I know you’re not running around murdering people for fun and profit. I know this is a Loki thing.”

Clint takes a deep breath and nods against her hand. He doesn't seem surprised that she knows. “I don’t know. It’s nothing like New York, but…” He trails off, and she clasps his hand. “It’s like I can feel him.” Then, suddenly, he laughs. “It’s like, he was totally fine for a while. I knew he was alive and he was having a goddamn _ball,_ whatever he was doing. But now, something’s wrong. There’s this panic— I wake up sometimes and it’s like I can feel people touching me—” Laura rubs her thumb over his hand again, and he seems to calm a little. “I sound crazy,” he huffs, still laughing a little. He nudges her. “You’re taking this pretty well.”

Laura shrugs and beams at him. “I may have already been talking to Jane about the whole thing,” she says slyly, bumping shoulders with him.

“Jane _Foster?_ ”

“Yeah,” she tells him. “She’s trying to use pieces of the Bifrost and satellites to find Loki in space.”

Clint waits a beat, and then laughs and shakes his head. “That woman was crazy back in New Mexico. I see she hasn’t changed. How are you even talking to her, anyway?”

Laura shrugs and smiles against his shoulder. “I think it started by being a part of the Concerned Wives and Girlfriends of the Avengers. Thor’s gone now, but I like to think we’re still friends,” she answers, and knows it’s true. Jane’s always answered when she calls, whether it’s to chat about books they’ve read or research or the overwhelming idiocy of the spies they’ve chosen to surround themselves with. Then the quiet of the night sinks in around them, and she asks, “Do you really think Thor’s dead?”

She can’t imagine telling Jane that. There’s still a lot of love there, even if it’s not exactly romantic.

Clint shrugs, a slight lift of one shoulder. “I can’t tell. Loki’s not rattling around in here right now. Everything was okay for years, and then suddenly it was like everything fell apart. Thor included.”

Laura remembers Loki in her kitchen, trying desperately to claw his way onto the linoleum floors. “Do you know how he is now?” she asks him.

Clint shakes his head. “No. I get flashes, sometimes, the touching, some panic. It’s like he’s drugged or something.” For the first time, Laura realizes that not only does he sound concerned by this entire bizarre turn of events, he sounds concerned _for Loki._

Laura looks at him. Clint looks down at her. “Don’t give me that look,” he sighs after a moment.

“You sound like you’re worried about the guy who burrowed his way into your mind and got you to kill people,” Laura says, blunt and direct.

Clint takes the hand that’s not wrapped around her shoulder to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “I’m not worried about him. He’s… the worst, Laura.” She waits for him to continue, picking at some lint on the front of his shirt. “There’s no excusing what he’s done, obviously, but when I was with him, y’know, back during New York, he was real fucked up.”

“Yes, well, he did try to commit genocide, dear.”

“No,” Clint replies a little too forcefully, then calms. “I know. And he was controlling me and everything, but I remember that he didn’t really want to be there. Or didn’t understand why he had to be there. There was this… this thing that was looming over him. I didn’t get the whole picture,” he sighs, and thunks his chin on top of her head. “This whole thing is really complicated.”

Laura laces her fingers with his. “We’ll figure it out.”

 

They lay everything out on the kitchen table while the kids play in the backyard. Every flash and memory of Loki that Clint can remember. Laura tells Clint that she would like to get their stories straight, their timelines, but also privately thinks it’ll be good for his sanity. If Clint sees though her, which he undoubtedly does, he doesn’t call her on it and putters around gratefully while she clears off the table.

There was the invasion, and Clint remembers a lot of screaming. An eyeball, a gala, the engine failure of the Helicarrier, Natasha coming at him with cold, cold eyes on a catwalk. Bits and pieces of the story that made the news, and bits of a story no one’s heard before. Loki, escaping the SHIELD compound, his skin slick with sweat and white as a sheet, pacing in some sort of stone lair, talking to himself (someone else? why was the air so cold?) in a corridor and her husband, brainwashed and still so kind, basically scraping him off the ground and into a cot without being commanded to do so.

And then there was after, boredom and boredom and then a grief that split his skull in the middle of a mission. Clint’s been orphaned since he can remember, the circus lacking a large amount of parental figures, but he missed a shot in France because he suddenly felt this massive, gaping loss and a memory of a woman wreathed in gold, his head in her lap. Then the phantom sensation of death creeping in one night laying in bed with Laura, Clint dying right next to her and she didn’t even wake up. And then waking up the next morning and feeling so confused (“Why was he alive, he had been _impaled_ , why was he _STILL ALIVE—_ ”).

And then after that, everything was so calm for a while. Clint said it was relaxing having Loki in his head then, because sometimes it was nice to climb in the jet after a long job and just tap into Loki, let himself feel it. Sure, not everything was great all the time, but he was having fun, and doing things he liked! Clint drew a little sketch of Loki with his horns on a post-it and filled in the face with a big smile and some evil eyebrows (“I don’t know what he was doing,” Clint said, “but it sure as hell wasn’t legal.”). There were brief flashes of a kingdom made out of gold, and a life of luxury, and a face that wasn’t Loki’s in the mirror, one of an old man.

And even after that, when everything had fallen apart. Things weren’t nearly as clear, just jagged flashes of green and black, the eerie sense that for the first time, he existed on Earth in two places at once, and then the feeling, the sinking certainty that Thor was dead. Then came the blurriness, the fog, and the sensation of dizziness and grief, all swamped together in one. That had come within the past few days, when Laura had seen him tumbling through the Bifrost.

“Do you think he knows that this is happening?” Laura asks, leaning against him comfortably, looking at the timeline of Loki’s life. “If we find him, and he finds out, he might not be too happy.”

“That should give him more incentive to figure out how to stop it,” Clint says darkly. “But I can’t imagine him not knowing. Who knows, maybe he’s been getting fun looks into my life. That’s probably why he knew to come here when whatever the hell happened on the Bifrost happened.”

It’s not a reassuring thought, that Loki’s been peering into her life as well. Watching her cook and take care of the kids and talk to Natasha. If she was married to Clint, and Loki was in Clint’s brain, did that mean—

Clint, thankfully, cut off that increasingly panicked train of thought. “Do you think Jane will want any of this? Do you think it’ll help?” he asks, looking around at the mess of paper cuttings and the kids’ markers they’ve made of the kitchen.

Laura sighs. “I’ll text her.”

 

Jane is excited. Which shouldn’t be surprising, because Jane’s excited about all science, especially the weird space magic kind. They take the post-it that reads _Thor dead?_ off the table and send her photos of the rest, and after about three minutes she calls to exclaim, “You think Loki’s been on Earth? Do you have any idea where?” she demands, and Laura puts her on speakerphone.

Clint scratches his head and looks down back at his notes. Under the sheet of copy paper that reads _Bifrost from Earth? To Earth?_ are the words _very green_ and _cliffside?_ He sighs. “Not really. It seems kind of familiar, but I’ve been all over the world. It’s impossible to—” And he stops short. “Jane, do you still have the videos from Norway?”

There’s a brief moment of silence on the phone before Jane answers, a bit quizzically, “From two weeks ago? Yeah, of course.”

“Send them to me,” Clint says.

She does. Clint tilts the phone so Laura can see, and swipes through the photos so fast she can barely see anything until he lands upon the one he wants. There’s a lot of science equipment set up, spikes of some sort dug into the ground, and what looks like Darcy posing in the middle. But behind all that is a clear blue horizon looking off into the ocean, and a grassy cliffside. If the place wasn’t so full of equipment, it could easily be a beautiful place. “This is it. Loki was here,” he says, and Jane immediately launches into a volley of questions, all of which Clint steadfastly ignores in favor of staring at the photograph. He traces his fingers very delicately over the phone’s screen as to not swipe to a new photo. “Something happened here.” He pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

“Do you think all those readings we were getting from Norway were Loki?” Jane asks, then answers herself a moment later. “They could be. They looked like the readings I got the first time Thor came to Earth, but I didn’t see any kind of pattern that marked the Bifrost’s appearance.”

Laura shrugs. “It’s a cliffside. There’s winds, and it looks pretty picturesque. Tourists could’ve come and erased them.” Clint absentmindedly presses his lips to her hair.

“That’s possible,” Jane says, her voice coming in a little staticky. “If you’re sure, I can take a look back over those readings. The readings I got from Clint’s clothes were very, very helpful. It’s nice to have _someone_ who knows what’s going on here.”

Laura isn’t sure if she’s talking about her or Clint, but the thought is nice anyway. Jane keeps mumbling, more to herself than to them, before Clint excuses them so they can cook dinner. Jane mumbles some more but manages to thank them, and hangs up the phone. They stay there for a moment longer, looking down at the Loki Timeline on the table and the kids in the yard before Clint sighs and taps the table with one finger. “We’ll figure it out,” Laura repeats. Clint knocks his head against hers and they call the kids inside.

 

“I’m going to need that connection of yours,” Jane says a week later, having the good grace to FaceTime them during lunch instead of texting them jumbled up messages at one in the morning as usual.

Cooper’s balanced on Clint’s lap, but he doesn’t seem to be paying attention to the conversation, focusing rather on Clint’s StarkPad. Laura doesn’t want to get the kids involved in this _at all_ , but they’re smart and know something’s up. They don’t know the extent of it, and Laura’s not sure what they would do if they did, but they definitely know. “It’s not like I can give it to you,” Clint replies, and shoos Cooper off into the living room so he can talk without a mouthful of his hair.

“No, but you can give me access to your brain. Come to London. I’m so close to—” Jane starts.

“What’s that going to do? It’s not like Loki put a microchip in my brain,” Clint cuts her off.

“I’m sure I can find something,” she insists. “I’m not a neuroscientist, but it is science—” She doesn’t get to finish that sentence either.

“Magic,” Clint says with a certainty he didn’t have before New York.

“Same thing,” Jane counters. “Come to London and I’ll show you.”

Laura looks across the table at him, and Clint looks back into the living room, where Cooper is still playing on the tablet, laughing at some game he’s playing. Lila is upstairs, playing on her keyboard, and even though Clint’s hearing isn’t so great Laura can hear her loud and clear. Laura nods at him, and Clint turns his attention back to Jane on the phone. “I’ll come. Just send me the address.”

“It’ll be like a mission,” Clint tells her later. “I’ll stay for a week, tops. If Jane can’t figure something out in that time, I’ll come home and we’ll figure something else out. I’ll get him out of here,” he says, tapping on his temple. When Laura doesn’t answer right away, Clint nudges her a little with his elbow. Laura still doesn’t answer him. It feels a bit strange, to know and have confirmation that there’s someone else living in Clint’s head and that the person walking around in Clint’s body sometimes isn’t him. It feels even stranger to realize that she hasn’t fallen out of love all this time, even when the man wandering around her kitchen wasn’t the one she married.

Clint doesn’t say anything else. She thinks he’s realized, too. Spies. Can’t keep anything a secret.

 

He goes to London. He texts her almost every hour, even on the plane with his fancy phone. Jane texts her a thank you for helping her with her research, even Laura’s the one who contacted her for help in the first place. She gets a text from an unknown number hours after Clint’s arrived at Jane’s makeshift lab that reads: _ya man is looking kind of down_

Laura texts back: _Who is this?_

It’s Darcy. Of course. Next comes: _janey’s doin some scans and gettin real excited. wouldn’t it be wild if something actually happened_

Laura entertains the thought, very briefly, of nothing happening ever, and Clint returning home to the kids and being two people for the rest of his life. The thought is horrifying, and on the tail end of it comes a sick, weird kind of curiosity.

Now that they have a confirmed connection and Laura doesn't feel as crazy, certain instances come to mind. Clint telling the kids bedtime stories that border on mystical and terrifying (the kids had loved them, but _still_ ), doing some strange knife-wielding martial arts in the barn (she had watched him through binoculars, which she felt better about now), or just sitting more rigidly across the table from her at dinner. Loki's been _living in her husband's body_ for years now and things have, for the most part, turned out okay. Laura’s pretty sure those bags she found were some kind of wards for the house. It feels, well, kind of bad to exorcise him.

Darcy texts: _some WEIRD SHIT is goin down im calling you_ , and she does less than three seconds later.

Laura picks up the phone. “Is Clint okay?” she demands, and then immediately becomes aware that there is something roaring on the other end of the phone. “What the hell is that?” she yells, pressing the phone further to her ear. “Did you find him? Darcy?”

“Holy shit,” Darcy says. _“Holy shit.”_

The roaring gets louder and louder until Laura has to yank the phone away from her ear and, with shaking hands, put it on speakerphone so her eardrums aren’t blown out. “What’s going on?” she yells. She was worried about exorcising Loki, but she hadn’t given any thought to the fact that whatever magic held their connection in place might’ve backfired or done something. Clint and her had parted in the driveway with perfunctory kisses.

“There’s—” It was Darcy’s voice, cut off, maybe Jane’s. Then, definitely Darcy’s as the roaring finally settles down. “Holy fucking shit, Laura. We did it. Well, Jane did it but I work for her so technically—”

“Darcy, I swear to God, what is happening over there?”

“Jane brought down the whole building!” Darcy yells back, sounding happier than Laura’s ever heard her. “We brought a huge goddamn spaceship inside!”

“Wait,” Laura says. “What?” 

 

This is the first explanation Laura gets: there was a ship, and they were in space (Laura is reassured that there’s a huge backstory to all of this, which includes Loki’s and apparently also Thor’s brief trip to Norway, but it isn’t explained to her entirely), and then they came across another, much bigger ship in space and everyone was really scared, and there was a really horrible noise and some light and they were in the building. Laura gets this explanation from a man with a higher pitched voice who also did not seem to know entirely what was happening but was happy about it anyway. She is informed, as Clint eventually takes over the line, that was a rock alien who doesn’t seem to have his “hardass head on right.”

“Aliens,” Laura says. “You better have a really good explanation as to why there are aliens in this equation now.”

“Technically, there’s always been aliens. Loki’s an alien. Thor’s an alien. Our lives are full of aliens,” Clint tries.

“Honey, I’m two seconds away from a mental break.”

“Right,” Clint says. “Let me video call you.”

He does, from his own phone this time as Darcy is apparently demanding her phone for selfie purposes, and his face comes into Laura’s view. They were just talking, but a weight eases off her shoulders at seeing his face. He looks… well. Really great, actually. Laura can see that there is abject pandemonium happening in the background, but he looks fairly relaxed, and there’s an ease around his eyes Laura hasn’t seen for years.

This is the second, more thorough explanation Laura gets: Clint had gone to London, done some brain scans, and Jane had determined that there was some weird science going on up there. Clint does not know anything about neuroscience, but he tries, and Laura appreciates it. When Clint tried to consciously activate the connection between Loki and him, a lot of Jane’s equipment that wasn’t for neuroscience had blown up with radiation or science or magic, whatever they were calling it, and Jane had gotten the brilliant idea to take Clint to a _different_ part of her lab and try to activate the connection there. The part of the lab where Jane had been trying to activate an Einstein-Rosen bridge for over six years.

The Einstein-Rosen Bridge, as Clint tried to explain, was a shoddier Bifrost. “It’s not,” Jane interjected, sticking her face in the frame. “It’s a different thing entirely. The Bifrost is sent out one way. With my hypothesized Einstein-Rosen Bridge, you need a connection at both ends for it to work. I got my connection and it _worked—_ ”

Clint directs her to another alien. “She’s right. Jane got her connection,” he says, somewhat uneasily. “We pulled their ship out of space, taking them out of what was looking to be some kind of fight with another ship, and brought them to… London. The news should be here soon.”

It’s all very amazing, Laura is sure, but calling spaceships and housing aliens isn’t what started this whole thing in the first place. “If your magic bond took you to the spaceship, that means Loki was on it,” she guesses, and Clint nods grimly.

“He’s here, alright. I think he’s avoiding me. Thor’s here too, avoiding Jane. I don’t really want to talk to him, but I still kind of feel like a jilted ex,” he hisses into the phone and Laura covers her mouth with one hand to hide her smile.

“Those kids need to talk it out. You too. Go find Loki,” she tells him. In the background Darcy is holding some kind of huge insect and making cooing baby noises at it. “And you brought the aliens here. You have to keep the media under control.” After seeing the way the news warped Steve and some of the other former Avengers after the great catfight with Tony, she’s been wary of letting her husband in the spotlight, but this does seem like it’s shaping up to become an intergalactic incident.

Clint groans, long and low, up until Laura hangs up the phone, feeling like there’s a knot in her stomach but better than she’s been in weeks.

Darcy, twenty minutes later, sends her two blurry Snapchat photos: one is a woman with chestnut skin holding a sword that Darcy’s captioned with a few emojis Laura’s never seen but look vaguely sexual, and the second is a photo from the side of Clint and Loki talking. Well, Clint looks like he’s yelling at Loki and he’s got a dramatic finger pointed at his face. Loki looks regal and stiff-backed, but he also seems to be looking a little to Clint’s right, directly at Thor’s back, as if trying to summon him and cash in on millennia of protective big brother emotions. That one is captioned _getcha boys before they kill each other._

Laura texts Clint and tells him to calm down and use his words.

Clint texts back _I’m using so many words._

She types out _Why don’t you bring Loki here and we can all talk about it? Jane seems kind of busy,_ and sends it before she can think better of it.

_KIDS??_ Clint texts back, then right on the heels of it, _I get a weird feeling he’s cool with kids??_

Laura would trust that weird feeling, considering she’s positive she’s seen Loki interact with the kids before and hadn’t done anything particularly nefarious aside from telling them scary stories sometimes. _He can come when they’re at school._

She doesn’t get an answer for a while, but considering Darcy sends her about a Snap a minute, she doesn’t worry about it too much. She has no idea when she even downloaded the app or when Darcy apparently friended her, but she’s grateful for it now. She gets several more pictures of her and the buff warrior woman who’s she’s apparently befriended, blurry snaps of Thor with more explicit emojis, and finally the one she’s been waiting for: Loki and Clint sitting on the floor, apparently having some sort of conversation. Darcy’s captioned it: _they talk at the same time and it is FREAKAY._

Clint sends her a message about an hour later. It’s long.

_I’ve extended the invitation. Put some stuff together it’s been rough. Asgard is gone. The whole realm is just gone. The people who are on the ship that’s in the lab are refugees from some other planet and whoever is left from asgard. Their dad is dead and Thors king now. They’re trying to set up a new life here._

Clint would never ask, so she does. She doesn’t think about what those two idiot brothers have been through, because that’s trauma for another time, but she asks.

_Is loki doing anything important? With setting up everything?_

Clint says, _no I don’t think so. Its loki. Why?_

_He should come stay with us._

So he does.

 

The thing is, Clint is still filled with bottled, rightful resentment of what Loki has done to him, so it’s not easy. Loki _did_ attempt to exterminate an entire race, and then try to conquer the Earth, and Laura knows for a fact that having him in her house with her children is absolutely absurd. The mission shifted, very suddenly, from getting Loki out of Clint’s head to finding a life that integrates her husband’s new mind roommate. She perhaps doesn’t get quite how bad it must look from the outside until Natasha shows herself. She hasn’t seen Nat since the whole thing with Tony and Steve went down, because apparently she’s hiding in some secret African country and Laura has respected that. Nat goes off the grid for weeks, months at a time, and Laura has gotten used to telling herself over and over that she’s alive. It’s a spy thing, and even years later Natasha is still learning how to be part of the family.

Laura’s phone rings literally about twenty minutes after Loki arrives with nothing but a leather knapsack. The kids are at school right now, and Clint had managed to be casual about the whole thing for about five minutes before shuffling Loki outside to the patio so he can roam around the farm and the yard and retreating upstairs to calm down. Natasha, from around the world, naturally senses that Laura’s alone and calls from a strange number.

“What exactly does he think he’s doing over there?” she intones the second Laura picks up the phone.

“The kids are great, Nat. We’re all really good. Thor’s settling in in Norway, setting up the new Asgardia. I got a haircut yesterday. We’re very—”

“Laura,” Natasha says. “You have know that this isn’t him.”

“Actually,” Laura snaps. “It is. And he’s my husband. I know him.” Natasha doesn’t answer for a moment, and Laura takes a moment to breathe. “I also have it scientifically backed up through Jane Foster’s impeccable research. I’m pretty sure she’s halfway through an article about their psychic connection.”

Loki is staring at the farmhouse outside. Laura can spy him through the kitchen window. He’s just standing there, immobile, looking at the doors. “Loki isn’t stable. Or good,” Natasha says.

“I’m aware,” Laura replies dryly. Loki had taken one look at her and had given her a little jerky bow, thanked her politely yet awkwardly for her help in getting the spaceship out of their sticky situation, and skittered around the kitchen for a moment before Clint had booted him out back. She got the impression that Loki thought he did it all rather smoothly and was rather proud of himself, so she left him to it. “You could argue that Clint isn’t either of those things also. Or you.”

She doesn’t say it to piss Natasha off, but she can tell that it isn’t the nicest comparison by the minute huff that comes from the other end of the phone. “You have to be careful,” is all Nat says.

Laura wonders if Natasha remembers the years she spent slinking around the house, big-eyed, young, and terrified of anything that moved, more feral than anything else once she dropped her seductive persona. _This is the only stray you’re allowed to bring home,_ Laura had told Clint, and then Clint had dragged the world’s most dangerous team into the house. She thinks she’s allowed to let her husband’s psychically connected maybe-enemy inside. This is her stray. “I always am,” Laura says, and Nat hangs up the phone. She gets some heart emojis from a _different_ strange number about two minutes later, and smiles. 

 

“You know we have children, right?” Laura asks Loki, walking up behind him. He’s still slinking around the outside of the house, which isn’t really creepy but a little irritating to watch him check all the windows over and over again, like Clint hasn’t booby-trapped them to kingdom come. Like they’re _amateurs._

“Of course,” he replies. “Three of them. I have… interacted with them at times.”

That should probably scare her more than it does. “Just making sure. Don’t scare them and don’t be weird. Don’t encourage them to create chaos, because I hear that’s your thing. They’re probably going to ask you a lot of questions and drag you around the house because they like new people. Lila will want to spar with you. That’s not a thing you’re doing. Are we good?” Laura demands.

Loki has the sense of mind to look a bit spooked. “We are good,” he says, perhaps a bit cautiously, and Laura goes back inside. She notices on the way back that he’s tucked his little hex bags into the corners of the windows and sighs. Whatever makes him feel better.

Clint is waiting for her when she comes back inside, lurking at the bottom of the steps and making an effort to look like he wasn’t spying on their conversation outside. “He’s fine. Just telling him the kids’ rules. He seems a little thrown,” Laura says, brushing past him into the kitchen.

“There’s a lot of—” Clint gestures broadly to the world, “—shit happening. I’m thrown. Why are you not thrown?”

Maybe if Laura hadn’t done almost this exact same thing with Natasha over a decade ago, she would be. But Natasha was honestly ten times more terrifying and less human than Loki is right now, and he’s behaving himself. She shrugs. “He just seems awkward. I can deal with awkward,” she says.

Loki is apparently not too thrown or awkward to stay away from her for long, because as Clint is reading stories to the kids in their room, he approaches her in the kitchen. He is very out of place in their rustic house, still dressed to the nines in leather with some kind of metal accruements and his hands clasped behind his back like he’s trying to make himself look polite. She thinks the leather will be making an exit soon, as the kids were very, very excited to have a real-life Asgardian warrior in their house and took every opportunity to grab at his armor. Loki was largely a good sport about the whole thing, if not a bit rigid and surprised, and Clint had shooed them away eventually. “I must ask,” he says. “Why exactly am I in your home? I can feel that it’s not due to your husband’s forgiving nature.”

Laura hums for a moment, then elbows him a little. “Help me with these dishes.”

Loki is very patient with waiting for her answer, but very useless with the dishes. He just plugs up the sink and submerges them in soapy water several times, occasionally deigning to rub at a spot with his thumb. It’s honestly fascinating to watch, and Laura breaks just to stare at him as he stacks dirty, wet dishes next to him. “You’re a disaster,” she tells him, and she can see him rearing up for some insult before she cuts him off. “You’re fine. I forgot you’re a prince. I’ll teach you.”

“I was a prince,” he corrects, firmly but not unkindly.

She shrugs. “Thor’s king now. That still kind of makes you a prince.” She knows there’s something there with Loki and his exact status of kinghood and brotherhood, but Clint hasn’t explained a lot of it to her, perhaps out of respect for Loki’s privacy or because he just doesn’t know. Maybe because they share a brain now it’s something he feels uncomfortable about too. “You’re here because I care about Clint. A lot. And apparently, you two have scrambled your brains together, so he’s got chunks of you and you’ve got chunks of him. That means I care about you too.” It shouldn’t be this easy, but it is. Natasha had come into Laura’s home having closed her hands around some sector of Clint’s heart, and it was easy with her too.

Loki looks a little stunned. Laura thinks again, he’s probably thinking that he’s playing it cool, so she doesn’t call him out on it. She teaches him how to do the dishes and the second she’s done he scuttles out of the room to the extra bedroom he’s magically tacked onto the house. She can’t actually see the room from the outside of the house, it just is there, somehow, but it’s probably good that Loki has his own space. “What the hell was that?” Clint demands. He’s been watching them from the shadows of the staircase for god knows how long, but Loki was probably aware of it.

Laura rolls up the dish towel and smacks him on the thigh with it. “Can you use your new fancy brain connection to tell me exactly how many hugs he’s gotten in his life?” she demands right back. Loki can probably hear her, but she doesn’t care.

“I don’t think _that’s_ Loki’s problem—” he yelps.

“It certainly would’ve _helped—_ ”

They bicker for a few more moments before it dies down like most of their little fights do, and they collapse in the kitchen chairs. “You really care about that shithead, huh?” Clint asks eventually.

“Yes,” she replies viciously, and slams the towel down. 

 

It would be a lot easier for Clint to keep up this resentment towards Loki if Loki didn’t do his best to befriend Laura and the kids, and also didn’t look like a kicked puppy at least seventy percent of the time. Laura doesn’t think it’s on purpose. His sad eyes were just probably like that. Laura also knew that even if some of it was an act, the intent to redeem was probably there, or maybe just a desire to be liked. Or a desire to be like by Laura and the kids specifically, which led to another interesting conversation.

It was glaringly obvious that Loki had no idea how to form a genuine friendship with her, or whatever kind of relationship with her. The kids unfortunately were easy bribes and magic tricks, tiny gifts, and a willingness to get into mischief and let them into the chest in the barn where Clint kept all his weapons won them over in about three days. He got an earful about that last one. But with Laura it’s different, so she asks him about it. “What exactly is it you want out of me?” she asks him after finding him one day ineffectually trying to sweep the patio after she had made a thoughtless comment earlier that day about the leaves. He could easily do it with magic, but Laura called it cheating once and it seemed to bruise his pride so he hadn’t tried it since.

She has him literally cornered up against the railing of the porch, but he tries very hard to lean casually up against the house, broom in one hand. “I don’t understand,” he says airily, and pushes some leaves through the slats of the porch onto the ground. He’s just so bad at it.

“You’re trying really hard to impress me.”

At that, he puffs up a little bit. “I am simply trying to show my gratitude in you taking me in. While me and your husband have a tumultuous past, I am not above giving my thanks.” She’s pretty sure his life would be easier and nicer had he stayed with Thor and helped build Asgardia now that the U.N. was apparently in on the whole thing and giving the refugees accommodations at Thor’s request, given that he was an Avenger and all. But then again, the U.N. might not be too hot to give Loki specifically his own hotel room after the invasion thing, and Thor video called Clint like, every day anyway. Loki even deigned to talk to him for a few seconds about sixty percent of the time, which Thor seemed to take as a huge positive. Their relationship was very confusing, Laura thought.

“I really don’t think that’s it,” Laura replies. “Considering you haven’t actually said ‘thank you’ once and you are exclusively doing things you think will make me happy.”

“Don’t be absurd,” he snaps. It’s not very intimidating with the broom and the fact that he’s taken to stealing Clint’s clothes, so he’s in sweatpants and an old SHIELD hoodie. That by itself was weird. “I am just—” He does a distinctly Clint Barton-esque gesture, swinging his hands out a little and making a face. It doesn’t fit right on him, but she finds it kind of endearing anyway. _Lord._ He’s _endearing_ now. Her brain is broken too. At least it’s because he did something Clint-ish, and not because of any part of Loki himself, because that would be—

Laura stops. “Oh,” she says.

There’s a rather deep flush starting on his cheekbones and moving slowly down. “I can’t help it,” he spits. “He’s _married_ to you. And he has been very embarrassing about the whole thing,” he continues, just as flushed, and makes an elegant hand roll to his temple. When she just continues to stare at him, unable to believe that this is her life now, he glances to the side. The flush has overtaken the majority of his face, and it’s not charming. It’s not. “It should really be reassuring, if you think about it,” he continues, unaware that’s probably talking too much, “that he still loves you after all these years—”

“I already knew that,” she says. “I don’t need psychic confirmation from a supervillain.” Then, when his face does something sad by the corners of his mouth, she corrects herself gently. “Not supervillain. I know something happened there. In space.” His face does something even worse, a sort of entire shift to something almost afraid, and she’s struck with the strange urge to pet his hair even though it looks like a greasy wreck.

“I understand that this was a circumstance you didn’t sign up for. I can—” he starts, and she holds up a hand to stop him.

“Please don’t martyr yourself. I’m going to talk to Clint about this, and then we’re going to talk about this some more, and you’re not going to leave before I get to you. Got it?” she says, and again he just looks a bit spooked but nods.

She talks to Clint about it. “It wasn’t like I knew this was going to happen,” he whines. “I’m already in love with you, it’s not like him being in love with you made me feel any different!”

“Well, it’s happening!” she hisses, trying not to turn this into a row. The kids have gone to bed and she’s pretty sure Loki is lurking at the bottom of the steps trying to listen in. “And now I have one ex-villain with trauma in my house, and he’s in love with me because you’ve merged brains with him.”

“You say that like it’s my fault!” Clint almost yells.

“I didn’t say that, but you have to understand that this is making me a little…” Laura sighs and waves her hand. “Uncomfortable.”

Clint looks at her. Laura looks at him. “Is that really the word you want to use?” he asks quietly after a moment, his eyes narrowing in a distinctly spy-like fashion.

“What is that supposed to mean?” she shouts after a second for lack of anything better to shout.

“So there is absolutely no part of him that you’re attracted to?” Clint demands.

_“What?”_

“You don’t want to like, let him live in our house forever and teach him how to be a normal, functioning person?”

“Forever? No. This was an entirely temporary arrangement.”

“Touch his hair?”

“No.” That’s a lie, but it’s a completely platonic urge spurned by the fact that Loki obviously has never seen shampoo in his life.

“Sleep with him?”

“No?” she yells.

“Because is it weird that I would be cool with that?”

There’s a full minute of silence. Laura stares at him, and he looks at the window. “No,” she says before he can make a break for it. “Why are our lives so weird?” she says after another moment, and sits down on the bed next to him and rests her head on his shoulder. He wraps his arm around her. “Do you want to sleep with him?” she asks him. “I won’t judge.” Laura thinks that the way their lives are turning out, it’s going to be impossible to judge each other for anything.

“My dirtbag brain is telling me it’ll be like jacking off. Which it won’t be. But I can’t convince my brain otherwise.”

“Is that a yes?”

Clint sighs. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” 

 

Lila, Cooper, and Nathaniel are with Laura’s parents, who still think Clint is some kind of travel agent despite the Avengers and Clint’s face having been plastered on the news many times. Loki knows something is up the second he emerges from his not-there room and the kids aren’t there even though it’s Saturday, because he’s been there for about three months and knows the schedule.

Loki doesn’t say anything, but ever since their conversation about a week ago he’s been avoiding Laura like the plague, either trying to be respectful and keep his distance or just embarrassed as hell. He does some dishes, properly this time, makes himself some hot chocolate (his new drink of choice; the sweeter the thing is the more he enjoys it, and apparently because Laura and Clint are fucking useless they’ve started stocking up on cookies and milkshake ingredients and obnoxiously sweet wine for him) and curls up on his usual spot on the big recliner chair in the living room. He can tell that they’re watching him, Laura knows, because even as he turns on the television he doesn’t seem to be watching it, shifting his eyes back and forth whenever one of them enters the room.

Her and Clint had talked about this, extensively, and there’s a plan in place that Laura’s sure will go wrong instantaneously, but they have to try. Loki gets up after about half an hour to get more hot chocolate from the kitchen, and they follow him in there. He’s standing in front of the sink, holding his mug clasped between his hands and looking out the kitchen window. “Do you want me to go?” Loki asks without turning around.

Laura and Clint exchange looks in the doorway. “That’s not it,” Clint says, and they advance.

 

(There’s a time where her and Clint’s hands are overlapping on Loki’s hips and Loki’s hands are over her shoulders, curled around the metal slats of the bed frame, where Clint suddenly slows to a halt and Laura realizes that Loki’s breathing is a bit too shallow. Clint just hooks his chin over Loki’s shoulder and disentangles his hands so he can run them down Loki’s sides, palms flat and soothing. They stop, and Loki pretty much flies out of the bed and hides in his invisible room for several days. Clint hacks more firewood than will ever be necessary.

Laura supposes she could ask Clint, but she doesn’t want to make her husband relive what she suspects are bad memories that don’t even belong to him, so she calls Thor. She asks about any “negative experiences” that Loki’s had recently, and that she’s a little worried about him after he had a little freak-out and definitely does not mention this freak-out happened while Loki was sandwiched between her and Clint. Thor does a lot of blubbering and beating around the bush, seemingly not wanting to answer her question and also not wanting to offend her, but eventually says something about a Grandmaster and Loki weaseling his way out of gladiatorial combat. Laura thinks, through all of his blustering, that he looks a little sad. She thanks him, says she’ll try to talk to Loki about it, and hangs up.

Talking with Loki about it predictably does not go well, as he postures and snaps and bares his teeth like she’s coming in there explicitly to hurt him, and she eventually sits on his extravagant bed and tells him that her and Clint don’t actually want to have sex with him when he doesn’t want to. He spends another few days slinking around the house before coming into their room in the early hours of the morning.

“We should try this again,” he says, looking pointedly at a spot on the wall between them.

“Let’s,” Clint says, and throws back the covers.)

 

“Why just Clint?” Laura asks him. “Why not Selvig and all those other people whose minds you invaded?”

Loki shrugs, one shoulder rising elegantly. He’s propped up on his side, watching her. Clint is in the shower, and she’s sure in a later, more thorough mind meld he’ll know all about this conversation, but right now she wants to talk to Loki alone. They have a good thing going right now, and bringing up the mind control thing is a surefire way to get them started, even though it’s what got them here in the first place. “Perhaps because he was the first. Or the kindest. The power of the Infinity Stones are a bit beyond me, I’m afraid.”

“And how he got into your mind?”

He hums a little, thinking about it. “I think I may have let him,” he says finally. “The invasion does not count among the moments where my mental defenses were at their strongest.” He waits another moment before rolling over onto his stomach. “Perhaps, again, because he was the kindest. Or maybe he has a natural talent for navigating psychic bonds. I don't dwell on it. I think it's all worked out rather well.” In his worst moments, he’s railed against the invasion of his mind, the lack of privacy, etcetera, but now he sounds rather smug about the whole thing, and she smacks him on the ass with one of the pillows. 

 

(Clint wakes her up one morning, shirtless and shaking her awake with big eyes. “What?” she groans.

“I’ve got a feeling, and it’s weird,” he hisses, crouching next to the bed. Laura just rolls over, because the majority of Loki’s emotions are weird. “Like I’m coming out of my skin,” he continues, and that is perhaps more extreme than the usual Loki feelings. She turns around to get a better look at him, but he’s already crawling over her and back into bed, burrowing under the covers instead of dealing with the problem.

She gets up. It’s ridiculously early and a Saturday, so the kids are still sleeping, but she can see from the top of the steps there’s a lamp on in the living room, so Loki is awake and downstairs. She creeps down to see Loki in the kitchen, faintly illuminated from the light and eating a bowl of cereal while perched on the counter. There’s music softly playing from Clint’s stolen phone. “Are you feeling okay?” Laura calls softly, not wanting to startle him even though she knows the idea of sneaking up on him is impossible.

Instead, Loki looks up from the bowl and Laura is face-to-face with Loki’s eyes in a heart-shaped face. “Quite,” Loki replies. Laura just keeps staring until Loki shifts slightly, pushing her hair behind one ear and while attempting to nonchalantly eat her cereal. “Is this a problem?” she asks, sounding tight enough to the point that Laura knows she can’t fuck this interaction up.

“Not at all,” Laura replies, her voice only slightly higher than usual. “I’ll let Clint know.”

Loki doesn’t look entirely convinced. She’s also wearing one of Clint’s oversized shirts, which isn’t exactly _new_ , but is dramatically different now that it’s apparent Loki seems to think pants are only necessary when she’s a he. Her legs are rather long. “Uh,” Laura says, and retreats. _Nailed it._

Loki, at final glance, looks a little stunned. She’ll have to do damage control on that later. “Is Loki doing something weird?” Clint groans when she enters their bedroom again.

“Not exactly,” Laura replies, and sits next to him. “Also, I think I’m bisexual.”

Clint opens his eyes. “If that means what I think it means, we have a whole new avenue of opportunities to explore.”

Laura smacks him on the shoulder, but she doesn’t say no.)

 

“I’ve heard from Clint,” Natasha says over the phone. She’s on her way back from Wakanda, apparently, leaving Steve and his frozen, armless, and totally platonic friend behind so she can rejoin the outside world and hopefully see them sometime soon. Laura misses her, but having the three kids and Natasha and Loki in the house is going to be absolutely wild. “He’s informed me you two are making some bad decisions.”

Laura shifts uncomfortably. She’s sitting in bed with the moonlight pooling over the sheets, legs tucked under the covers with the phone pressed up against her ear. Clint is rummaging around downstairs for food and water, and Loki is laying on his back next to her, his eyes still glazed over. They should probably get some electrolytes in him. “Yes,” she replies, unsure exactly of how much Clint has told her. There’s also a fifty percent chance Nat has this whole place bugged and has seen Clint and Laura engage in these Bad Loki Decisions many, many times and in many, many positions and is just waiting for her to sweat it out.

Nat doesn’t answer right away, but it’s not a cold silence. If Laura could grade this particular Black Widow silence, she would probably say she’s trying not to laugh on the other end. “Does Thor know?” she finally settles on, and yes, there is a definite trace of laughter in her voice.

“God, I hope not. Defiling his bouncing baby brother.” Loki swings an arm out to lazily smack her in the thigh. “Do you know if Clint told anybody else on the team?”

“I don’t think he told anybody, but Wanda definitely knows,” Nat answers. Right. Another one of Clint’s almost-adoptions, and one with the convenient ability to read minds.

“Who are you talking to?” Loki murmurs, finally curling up on his side to face her.

“The Black Widow,” she says, waggling her eyebrows.

Loki makes a tiny noise in the back of his throat, one Laura’s come to associate with him being decisively affronted. He makes a lot of strange sounds. Laura thinks it might be a Jötunn thing so she’s avoided telling him how super adorable it is every time he does it, but there’s only so long she can restrain herself. “Is Loki there?” Natasha asks sharply. “Put him on.”

Laura gives the phone to Loki and goes to join her husband downstairs after putting on some clothes. “Nat and Loki are talking,” she announces and Clint squints.

“That seems like it’ll go really great or really bad. If she hadn’t outsmarted him and he wasn’t such a huge bitch all the time I think they might’ve gotten along,” Clint says, and she kicks him lightly from where she’s sitting on the counter. “It’s true.”

“Hopefully they’ll still get along,” Laura says, and throws some chicken nuggets in the oven. She leaves Loki and Nat to it.

They talk for a long time.

 

Things are not always okay. Loki brings a lot of baggage with him, and even though their minds are linked now Clint still struggles with what’s been done to him. Loki sometimes (usually) isn't the best person to have a connection with, and Clint can fall into his rages, his depressive episodes, long periods of time where he'll just stare at a point on the wall. Loki gets some of Clint's more charming traits, his hand motions, his good-natured snark, but also a different brand of self-loathing episodes and mission trauma. Sometimes Laura has to pull them apart from arguing and spitting at each other in the kitchen and she knows Natasha has probably broken up some of the nastier ones. 

It's not all terrible. They never do anything bad around the kids. Clint vowed a long time ago never to bring his baggage where they could see it, and that’s probably bled into Loki, who treats them outwardly with charming tolerance but Laura can see it runs a little deeper than that. It's nice, Laura thinks, to have one of the most powerful and terrifying sorcerers in the universe hovering behind her children. The added bonus of Clint bursting magic out during particularly dangerous missions is reassuring. 

There is always the looming dread over the household, the knowledge that the ship Loki and Thor encountered in space is coming for Earth, coming for the Stones, carrying the monster Loki refuses to talk about. Things are not always okay, not by a long shot, but some days they are. Laura likes to think it’ll be most days, soon.

“It seems Loki’s digging under the bins by the farmhouse. Suspicious. Maybe he’s burying something? Any ideas?” Laura calls over her shoulder one morning, whisking some eggs and looking out the window to where Loki is bent over, his hands buried in the muck.

“His emotions,” Clint suggests.

“The horrors of his past,” Nat says at the same time, and they fist bump.

Laura flicks some egg in their direction. Horrible, the both of them. Lila and Cooper are Loki’s primary supporters in the household, completely thrilled to have another addition to the family, and Loki is always down whenever they ask him to play games. “Mom!” Lila shrieks, suddenly appearing in the doorway, brandishing a stick.

“Yes, Li— You’re filthy, what’s—” Laura manages to get out before Loki strolls in behind her, holding Cooper, who is holding a cat.

Natasha looks at Clint. He holds up his hands. “Nope. Not ours. You know I’m a dog person,” and then, when some emotion crosses her face, “Nat, c’mon—” That’s all he gets out before Lila launches herself at him.

“Loki found a cat stuck in the mud by the farm! Can we keep it?” Before Clint can even answer, she launches into a monologue of _please please please daddy he’s so cute._

Clint shoots Loki a glare over her head, and Loki shoots him one back over Cooper’s. It’s very cute, in a way. Laura removes Cooper from Loki and the cat from Cooper, agreeing with Lila that _yes he is the cutest thing ever go ask your father_ and washes the little thing off as best she can. It is, in fact, a very cute cat. Kitten. Golden, tiny, and noisy. She turns back around and places the cat on the kitchen table, right in front of Clint, who has his arms full of begging kids. It’s then Clint realizes that he’s the fixation of five people, who are all looking from him to the cat back to him. Loki and Natasha are trying their very best to look completely unaffected, but both of them also look like they’re dying to touch the kitten and also trying not to lose their shit about it. “Loki, help me out here,” he pleads, but Loki shakes his head.

“I like cats. So you must also, at least a little,” Loki replies cheerfully, shrugging and looking sunny when both of the kids renew their efforts now that they have at least one adult seal of approval.

“Ugh,” Clint says finally, and scoops the tiny thing up to hand him off to Lila.

“He’s so yellow! We should name him Thor!” Lila yells.

“We should not,” Loki replies, and Natasha stifles a snort into her coffee. “Thor would enjoy it too much,” he sniffs.

Laura lets the five of them bicker over the name as she finishes breakfast. She’s more of a cat person, too, and watching her family pass around the tiny, purring, kitten makes her heart calm in her chest despite all her worries about the whole situation. They decide on naming it Beans. She’ll find out later it was Loki who suggested it, and that makes it ten times funnier, but right now, she just divides the french toast and omelettes onto five different plates, telling her kids and Loki to go wash their hands. When they come back, she sits to Clint’s right, Loki’s left, and they all begin to eat.


End file.
